Doctor Who_ All-Consuming Fire - Andy Lane [8]
We took Trafalgar Square at a fast clip, and were heading up the newly built Charing Cross Road when Holmes said, 'How do you fancy a little run out tomorrow, old chap?'
His casual tone did not fool me.
'To the Library of Saint John the Beheaded?'
'I'll make a detective out of you yet,' he chuckled.
As we turned into Oxford Street we found ourselves behind a slow-moving bus - one of the dark green Atlas type -whose horses could not be raised from an idle canter. The press of traffic made it impossible for our own driver to overtake.
'These streets are becoming more crowded by the day,' Holmes remarked.
'There is only so much traffic the capital can take without grinding to a complete halt.'
It was twenty minutes later that we arrived at our lodgings in Baker Street.
Mrs Hudson, our landlady, had been alerted by telegram to our impending arrival. Despite a sprained ankle which had occurred during our absence, and which my locum had treated, she had a large dinner awaiting us. At last I was home and comfortable again.
I descended the next morning to find Holmes slumped in his armchair in the same position he had been in when I retired. He was still wearing his mouse-coloured dressing-gown.
'Have you slept, Holmes?'
'Sleep is for tortoises.' A huge pile of newspapers was spread around him and he was clipping out articles and pasting them into his files, 'I have a deal of catching up to do. Mrs Hudson had been saving these for me every day. This,' he said, waving a copy of the Globe, 'is the nervous system of the city, Watson! The agony columns, the small advertisements, the snippets of news concerning lost parakeets and accidents involving brewers' drays... I can predict half the crimes in London for the next six months by keeping abreast of these sorts of minutiae and trivia!'
Whilst I breakfasted on scrambled eggs, bacon and kedgeree, all washed down with cups of strong, sweet tea, Holmes busied himself amongst his cuttings. I took the opportunity to look around the room - made fresh to me by a few days' absence. It struck me suddenly how bohemian our abode must have looked to the casual visitor - of which we had more than our fair share, given Holmes's vocation. The general arrangement of chairs and tables was, it must be said, unremarkable. The three windows looked down onto Baker Street, and provided ample light. The furniture was comfortable.
A spirit case and gasogene in one comer were a welcome sign of refreshment, and a curtained recess in another provided privacy, should it be needed. No, it was the details that gave us away. The initials 'VR', which Holmes had patriotically inscribed in the wall adjoining his bedroom using a small-calibre revolver were, perhaps, the most obvious feature. Next to them his unanswered correspondence, affixed to the mantlepiece with a jack-knife, was a minor detail and the Persian slipper full of tobacco a mere frippery.
How did I put up with the man? More importantly, how did Mrs Hudson put up with him?
The answer to that was simple. Mrs Hudson's affection for Holmes was that same feeling that one would show for a precocious but wayward child. She had taken him under her wing, and Holmes, the great observer, never realized the extent to which she mothered him. The fact that the rent which
- and I frankly admit this - he paid for both of us could have already bought the house many times over did not influence her in the slightest, I feel sure.
I glanced over at the side of the room which, by mutual agreement, was
'mine'. A few scattered volumes of short stories, a copy of Gray's Anatomy, a framed portrait of General Gordon and an unframed one of Henry Ward Beecher . . . these were my possessions. Not for the first time, I compared my life to that of my friend, and I found myself wanting.
'I have been researching the Library of St John